Warped
by calliope-love
Summary: There may be more to a certain Chain than we had originally thought.


_It's time to get you a Chain_, they tell him.

Break is getting better at not showing it when he's nervous and he knows it, but today, he's convinced that everyone around him can see right through him. Everyone has to know he's up to something; there's no way the entirety of Pandora can't hear the way his heart is doing its damnedest to explode out past his ribs and flop around all over the carpet. The pinched tone in his voice has to be obvious and he's sure he's pale as death, and he can't quite stop himself from fiddling with his gloves as they lead him down to the gate.

Lady Shelly had smiled at him before they took him, but Lady Shelly always smiles. He'd thought there was a bit more of a gleam in her eye than usual this time, but he may have imagined it. On the other hand, she always does seem to know when he's being naughty and she almost always _approves_, and he holds that thought in his head to brace himself as the door opens.

_I got through it once, and I can do it again_, he tells himself, even if he's not entirely sure. _And anyway, that isn't even the most important part._

Only a few forced steps into the Abyss and he can't see the Pandora officers anymore, but he can't relax, waiting for the broken toybox of his memories to resurface. It doesn't. He isn't far enough in. But he isn't sure he'll ever get back out if he keeps going, so Break stops where he is. A few Chains lurking nearby move in the darkness, peering at him, and those are the ones he's supposed to be trying to summon to himself. Instead, he calls her name, just as he had that time - Alice...? Alice. _Alice!_ - and as the sound leaves his throat something shifts, something connects, and when he sees her in front of him again, he can't remember anymore if he's Break or Kevin.

Still so _white._ She lights up everything but him. The Chains who were nearby slither away, but that's alright. The Chain he wants is whichever Chain she wants him to have.

"It's you," she says, and she looks sleepy, as though she's just awakened from a nap; one small hand rubs at her eye. Then it registers that she does know him, she _does_, and she brightens, saying, "My wish! Have you come to grant my wish?"

Fear knotting his guts, Break sinks to one knee, subservient, a pose only granted to the Rainsworths anymore but still as familiar to him as walking. Trying to keep his voice strong even as the Abyss around him pulls the sound away, he tells her, "I've started to, and I have a plan." He's making one, at least, but she doesn't need to know that detail. "But Alice, I need help. I need a Chain, so I can work to free you. I don't - I don't think I can do it completely on my own."

As quickly as her demeanor had shifted before, it changes again, becoming guarded and mistrustful. She eyes him as though he's a roach that has just crawled out from under her sugar bowl, and Break reminds himself that dying wouldn't be so bad, really. But she presses those fingers together thoughtfully, those fingers he still has such terrible nightmares about, and murmurs, "Kevin needs a Chain. He isn't a White Knight anymore, so Kevin needs a new one..."

Then she floats forward, and one hand comes toward him.

Break prepares himself to lose the other eye. Hadn't he promised she could have it if it was what she wanted? She _had_ granted his own wish, after all, no matter how wrong it had gone. But this time, the Will of the Abyss reaches straight into his heart, and he can't tell exactly what part of it she pulls out, but he feels the time surrounding him shatter as she holds it in her hands.

"I'll make a special Chain," says the Will of the Abyss. "One for only Kevin." And then she warps him, takes that part of him and twists it and rips into it and turns it so, so beautifully ugly, and Break cries out as a red eye very much like his own opens in the darkness and stares down at him. He sees a tattered cloak and a pair of frozen watch hands behind cracked glass. A laugh rumbles up around him and what's left of the heart in his chest answers it, and Break reaches his arms out to the Hatter before he's even fully comprehended what just happened.

It's over quickly; he almost forgets to use that damned mirror instead of swallowing that blood himself as he had once before, but he tastes it in his mouth anyway, dark and thick. And when he finally stumbles back out of the Abyss, carrying a Chain so broken and angry that it can even burn holes in the black-winged Chains themselves, he's laughing. The Mad Hatter is made from him and for him and he knows without a doubt that one day it will be what kills him, but as he hears the Lady Shelly murmuring and hands tug at him, Break laughs and laughs and laughs, and he doesn't stop laughing for _weeks._


End file.
